Even coffee is exposed to capital chain tension quality shrinkage CMO Zhang Hongji response: false news!

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Some of the three major coffee players of "Star Lianrui" have been left behind!

Over the past year, the success of the "war" on coffee has attracted everyone's attention. Luckin Coffee accelerated its expansion in the Chinese market and teamed up with ele.me to launch a delivery service. Starbucks suffered a huge loss of more than 800 million yuan in the first nine months, and its annual loss may "far exceed this figure." its frenzied way of burning money and opening stores quickly triggered questions and discussions.

Unlike Ruixing, which is keen to burn money and enclose land offline, Starbucks advocates the "heavy offline" concept of "third Space", Lian Coffee takes the way of online social communication.

A few days ago, Lian Coffee, which has not made a sound in the market for a long time, announced that it plans to open about 50 "image stores" in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places. This move has attracted the attention of the industry, even whether the coffee move is a temporary strategy under competitive pressure, or does it want to revamp the previous low-cost takeout model?

In this regard, Lian Coffee-related official told Chinanews.com that one of the purposes of opening an "image store" is to "be seen" more, and it is also part of the company's established strategy. However, according to industry insiders, at present, the volume of even coffee in most stores in Beijing, Shanghai and other first-tier areas has dropped sharply, and the decline is obvious, and it has been exposed that suppliers such as coffee beans are in arrears, and the capital chain is tight. at the same time, there are also varying degrees of product quality problems.

The Lian coffee shop located in the south gate of Tianlihong market at the south entrance of Huixin West Street in Beijing has been changed into a flower shop.

It is revealed that the number of orders in stores has dropped sharply.

According to public data, Lian Coffee was founded in 2014. In the early days, it used the official account of Wechat as its entrance, accumulated users by providing coffee delivery services of Starbucks and other brands, and began to transform into its own-brand coffee in August 2015. With Internet thinking and O2O play, even coffee takeout coffee field gradually opened up the situation, and won some capital favor, previously obtained two rounds of financing totaling 208 million yuan.

But in 2018, Lian Coffee was attacked by Starbucks in the domestic coffee market. On the one hand, Starbucks suppressed it step by step, on the other hand, it was attacked by Luckin Coffee's crazy expansion. This makes the coffee delivery service so focused that even coffee is unprepared and faces a great threat to its survival.

"the number of orders per day is very small, and even in prosperous areas, the number of orders per day has dropped from 200 to 300 in May and June last year to more than 10 today." People in the industry who have worked in Lian Coffee revealed to Chinanews.com financial reporters. According to the reporter's observation at his store at the end of last month, even the daily delivery order of coffee in a store in Beijing is only about 50 orders. The above-mentioned industry insiders said, "the daily order volume in some core areas of Shanghai has also been falling to dozens of orders a day, and the good ones can barely break 100."

In this regard, Lian Coffee explained to Chinanews.com, "at present, even Coffee has opened more than 400 coffee workshops in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, and the coffee workshop has made an overall profit, and the first batch of image stores have also opened in various cities one after another. Overall, 2018 growth is among the leading levels in the industry."

The chain of payment in arrears to suppliers is tight?

According to the above-mentioned people, due to the decline in sales and the tight cash flow of declining revenue, even coffee has been in arrears to coffee bean suppliers for nearly half a year, and the payment cycle of other raw materials such as syrup and packaging materials has also been delayed. In addition, the reporter learned from the inside of Lian Coffee that due to multiple pressures, even Coffee is quietly reducing the cost of core materials such as coffee beans and machines.

The above-mentioned person told the reporter that in the choice of coffee beans, Lian Coffee is highly publicized as "high-grade single product coffee beans". In fact, a lot of Indian water-washed Robusta coffee beans (lower-grade coffee beans) are used in the formula, and in the selection of other materials, even coffee also replaces the syrup originally used with cheaper products.

However, even the coffee side denied the above problems. Lian Coffee said that "all stores use fully automatic coffee machines imported from Switzerland. At present, the coffee beans used in the American style, lattes and other conventional categories are gold medal coffee beans of the International Italian Coffee Taste Association." and 14-day shelf life of ecological farm fresh milk, syrup, butter and other raw materials have also been upgraded synchronously recently.

As for whether or not to owe coffee bean suppliers, facing the problem of capital chain, even coffee did not directly deny in response to reporters, saying only that the company is currently "actively preparing for 2019 expansion, and all suppliers are long-term and stable relations of cooperation."

Can the backward situation be reversed?

On January 10 this year, Lian Coffee announced that it had set up a total of 400 coffee workshops offline by the end of 2018. But on the main battlefield of coffee in 2018 when Luckin Coffee challenged Starbucks'"hegemony", even coffee seemed to be forgotten in a corner of the market.

In terms of the speed of opening the shop, even coffee has been thrown out of the first echelon. " The above analysis of the industry said. According to statistics, Starbucks currently has more than 3000 stores in China and COSTA has about 450stores nationwide. Compared with Starbucks, Ruixing and other brands with more stores, even the brand awareness of coffee is still low, and the market volume is not the same.

"A lot of users drink our coffee, but they generally don't see our brand logo, even though we have opened a lot of small coffee sites offline." Even Coffee CMO Zhang Hongji has made this public.

Even the coffee rebuke revelations are groundless.

Yiou asked Lian Coffee for confirmation on this rumor, and Lian Coffee replied that it was baseless and false news.

At about 10:00 on the 16th, even Coffee CMO Zhang Hongji responded to the matter on moments, saying bluntly that the revelation was not true and that it was precisely what Coffee did best.

Zhang Hongji then cited coffee beans, milk, vanilla seeds and butter as examples to show the high quality of the raw materials of even coffee. At the end of the WeChat moments response, Zhang Hongji said, "Don't drag me into time-wasting false information responses for any purpose or form. I'm busy making products and opening stores."

Even Coffee CMO Zhang Hongji's moments responded.

The store Zhang Hongji mentioned refers to the plan announced not long ago by Lian Coffee to start more than 50 image stores in Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, which is also one of the things they have focused on in the near future. A week ago, Yiou Restaurant reported that Lian Coffee had opened an R & D center store in Shanghai. In addition, Yiou Restaurant also learned that even Coffee's image store in Beijing Jianwai SOHO opened today. At the end of 2018, its first image store also opened in Beijing Wangjing SOHO.

"A number of image stores are opening one after another, including in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and other places. The upgrading of raw materials has been going on since the second half of last year. Coffee beans, fresh milk, Madagascar vanilla, including the new cheese sea salt launched this week, are bulletproof (upgraded to the top grain feed butter). These are all things that have been said publicly, "even the head of coffee told Yiou," if it is true, there is no need to upgrade the raw materials. "

In the past year, the domestic coffee market has been unprecedentedly lively. In addition to the continuous big moves of Starbucks and Luckin Coffee, the development of boutique coffee, convenience store coffee and self-service coffee has also accelerated in 2018. The high popularity of the market is certainly a big boost, but for coffee brands, product quality and user experience should always be put in the first place. In the face of increasingly fierce market competition, behind all kinds of tricks, what coffee brands need to do is to improve the supply chain to ensure quality control.

Source: Chinanews.com Finance and Economics, Euro Network

END